RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS
PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE:
A TEST OF INOCULATION THEORY
By Joon Soo Lim and Eyun-Jung Ki
Having observed the proliferation of corporate stealth campaigns employing parody videos on YouTube, we attempted to examine the effectiveness
of refutational preemption in providing viewers with ability to detect
unduly manipulative intent and in conferring viewer resistance to the
influence of the campaign. We also compared the relative efficacy of the
inoculation pretreatment to post-hoc refutation. Results showed that
subjects who received a preemptive inoculation message were better able
to detect unduly manipulative intent in a parody video, were more resistant to altering their original attitudes toward the issue, and demonstrated less favorable attitudes toward the sponsor of the parody video than
did their counterparts in the control group.
With the evolution of Web media from digital interactive media' to
social media, new ethical issues involving the use of social media's
unique characteristics have also emerged. Increasingly, corporate front
groups have been abusing the characteristics of social media, such as
user-generated content (UGC), word-of-mouth tactics, and anonymity.
In conjunction with such trends, some professional public relations or
lobbying firms have started to engage in clandestine campaigns that
conceal their true identity or the sponsors of these campaigns.
Parodies and spoofs have become popular formats for such
clandestine campaign messages, thanks largely to the popularity of
YouTube, a popular video-sharing Web site.^ One such example has
been dubbed the "YouTube Penguin Army scandal." Recently, a video
clip spoofing An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary film aimed
at raising public awareness of global warming, appeared on YouTube
with the claim that it was an amateur production created by a 29year-old Californian. Controversy emerged when the alleged producer
of the video was discovered to be the public relations and lobbying
firm DCI Group in Washington, D.C, whose largest client is Exxon
Mobil.^ This case became worldwide news when the Wall Street Journal
scooped the story, calling it the "YouTube Penguin Army scandal,"
because the video spoof ridiculed Al Gore's documentary by featuring a
group of penguins in tuxedos." Although the identities of the video's
Joon Soo Lim is an assistant professor. School of Journalism, Middle Tennessee State
J&MC Quarterly
University; and Eyun-Jung Ki is an assistant professor. Department of Advertising and
Vol. 84, No. 4
Public Relations, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. The authors thank the reviewers
^'"'" ^""^
for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
713-728
'Q2.007 AEJMC
RESISTANCE
TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON
YOUTUBE
713
producer and a likely sponsor were later disclosed, it was reported that
more than 60,000 people viewed the video^ before the Journal's scoop
revealed the story behind the video. This issue raised a serious ethical
concern on the scale of other unethical public relations practices such as
undisclosed special interests in front groups,'' unidentified paid commentary,' and paid op-eds."
Aside from the controversy surrounding such unethical corporate
stealth campaigns, Pfau and his colleagues^ raised the question of their
effectiveness. They demonstrated that stealth campaigns that mask sponsors' true interests might induce a positive effect if the producer's true
identity is not revealed. Those positive effects dissipated, however, and
eventually backfired on the corporate front-groups and their sponsors
when potential antidotes were administered to message recipients. The
present study aimed to assess the influence of potential antidotes in curbing the negative impact of the parody video on the audience's attitudes.
The antidotes used in this study were the preemptive inoculatiori and
post hoc refutation.
Literature
Review
714
Efficacy of Inoculation in Conferring Resistance to Stealth Catnpaign. Application of inoculation theory is useful in this study because it
explains individuals' tendency to resist an ethically suspicious persuasive
attempt when the malicious persuasive attack is revealed before reaching
the audience.
Main Effect of Inoculation. In a biological analogy, McGuire'" proposed the concept of inoculation to explain an individual's tendency to
resist changes in attitude due to propaganda. Similar to the process of
immunizing individuals against a virus by administering a weakened
dose of the virus, an inoculation message was assumed to protect people
from a persuasive attack by exposing them to weakened forms of the
attacking message ahead of time." The theory posits that refutational preemption triggers threat, motivating individuals to counterargue a subsequent attack message, thereby conferring resistance to attitude changes
caused by the persuasive attack.^^
Pfau et al." argue that inoculation is effective because people tend
to strengthen attitudes against change when exposed to the inoculation
message, deflecting persuasiveness of the subsequent attack message
from an opponent. In this process, threat or forewarning in the inoculation message is assumed to be an important factor that acts to confer
viewers' resistance to influence by imminent attacks.
Consequently, it must be considered whether the inoculation pretreatment confers resistance to the influence of stealth campaigns." For
public relations practitioners who need to manage an issue before it influences the public, it is critical to counter potential upcoming attacks that
are maliciously intended to damage an organization's reputation. An
organization can implement this inoculation strategy by providing either
supportive defense messages or refutational messages." During this
process, an organization needs to examine if it can employ refutational
preemption to effectively manage an issue by protecting its own reputaJOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
tion while also revealing the manipulative actions of attackers from
behind the scenes.
Previous research has also assumed that inoculation pretreatment
will be effective by motivating and providing the audience with the
opportunity to engage in additional thought with regard to the controversial issue."5 This inoculation-triggered elaboration may influence
viewers to resist the influence of information in conflict with their prior
strongly held beliefs or attitudes.'' This being the case, a further question to explore is whether an individual's motivation to resist a possible
persuasive message would be weaker if that person did not possess
strongly held beliefs or attitudes in relation to the issue prior to viewing
the message.
Sagarin and his colleagues"^ suggest that individuals tend to reject
information that they perceive as having been designed to unfairly
manipulate them. They posited that this perception of undue manipulation intent would be an ideal motivator for individuals to resist a persuasive message even when they are not especially knowledgeable
about the legitimacy of the speciflc claims made in the message.'^
Another beneflt of the perceived manipulation intent is that this perception is not restricted to the domain of one's prior beliefs or strongly
held attitudes.
Sagarin et al. demonstrated that an inoculation treatment against
an illegitimate persuasive attempt made the viewers more discriminating against unduly manipulative intent.^" On the basis of Sagarin et al.'s
finding, it is predicted that participants to whom the inoculation message is administered prior to their exposure to the front group's stealth
campaign message will be better able to detect the unduly manipulative
intent in the message.
HI: Participants who receive an inoculation treatment
will be more capable of detecting unduly manipulative
intent of a parody video that presumably comes from a corporate front group than will those in the control group.
Previous research showed that individuals' awareness of manipulative intent in a message led them to resist such manipulative intent
while generating viewers' trust and faith in the person who informed
them of the intent.^' Inferences of manipulative intent can then lead to
attitude resistance through counterarguing.^^ Although no prior model
demonstrating this mediating role of increased counter-argumentation
is specified here, it is assumed that inoculation manipulation elicits
counter-arguing as a result of the cognitive response to undue manipulation intent. As a result, participants who receive the inoculation message prior to exposure to the front group's persuasive message will be
more resistant to both the message and the message's sponsor. Thus, the
following hypotheses were proposed.
H2: Participants who receive an inoculation treatment
will be more resistant to attitude change following exposure
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
715
to a parody video that presumably comes from a corporate
front group than will those in the control group.
H3: Participants who receive an inoculation treatment
will be more resistant to the sponsor of a parody video that
presumably comes from a corporate front group than will
those in the control group.
Post Hoc Refutation. While the primary goal of this study is to examine the effect of refutational preemption on viewers' resistance to unethical parody videos, it also attempted to examine the effect of post-hoc refutation on the audience's resistance to the stealth campaign. In everyday
life, it is more likely that people would view a parody video first and then,
perhaps, come across articles, news stories, or some other messages that
would reveal the true identity of the producers behind such stealth campaigns as the "YouTube Penguin Army scandal."
Some studies have indicated that the use of an inoculation message
is more effective than post-hoc refutation in inhibiting viewers' attitude
change following exposure to a persuasive attack.^^ Scholars have devoted time and resources to explaining why inoculation pretreatment is more
effective than post-hoc refutation in conferring resistance to attitude
change. First, the threat presented in inoculation pretreatment motivates
recipients to counterargue the subsequent persuasive attempt.^" Second,
inoculation can elicit issue involvement^' or motivation to resist the imminent attack,^' which in turn instills resistance to persuasion. Third,
researchers who examined the sleeper effect have shown that persuasion
does not occur when discounting information precedes the message. In
such cases, subjects may be more disposed to counterargue the message
while they read it. Thus, the persuasive impact of the message is attenuated," partly because a recipient wonders "why bother reading an article
already proven to be false?"^**
Despite the apparent merit in comparing the power of refutational
preemption versus post-hoc refutation, this research inquiry has received
limited attention in previous inoculation research. On the basis of theoretical accounts, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
H4: The inoculation pretreatment will be more effective
than post-hoc refutation in conferring viewers' resistance to
attitude change following exposure to a parody video that
presumably comes from a corporate front group.
Roles of Issue Involvement in Resistance. In inoculation research,^'
issue involvement was treated as a mediating variable, assuming that the
threat elicited by inoculation pretreatment would boost the involvement
levels. Zuwerink and Devine^" found that individuals who demonstrated
high issue involvement were more resistant to the message than those
with low involvement. In contrast, findings in Pfau et al.'s study'' indicated that involvement may function as a prerequisite for threat and, thus,
also for inoculation. In their structural equation model, involvement was
JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
paralleled with inoculation treatment, supporting the instrumental role
of involvement in inoculation. It is noteworthy that involvement contributed directly to individuals' resistance to attitude changes, whereas
threat induced by inoculation treatment affected viewers' attitudes only
in terms of the low-involving and moderately-involving topics.
This study examined the role of involvement in the inoculation
effect with the following research question:
RQl: To what extent does involvement eliminate the
effect of inoculation treatment on viewers' resistance to a
parody video that presumably comes from a corporate front
group?
To test the proposed hypotheses and answer the research question.
a Web-based experiment was administered. Participants were drawn
from the same pool and randomly assigned. In a pretest-posttest control
group design,32 the experimental group received the inoculation pretreatment, while the control group participants did not. Participants in
both groups were then exposed to a parody video. A third group of participants assigned to the post-hoc refutation group also did not receive
pretreatment, but they were provided a post-hoc refutation message following their exposure to the parody video. Finally, their resistance to the
intended persuasion was measured to test the effectiveness of inoculation strategy in conferring resistance to the parody video induced persuasion.
Context of the Issue. The issue addressed in this study is so-called
"Net Neutrality," the idea that Internet cable network providers should
make all Web sites equally accessible.^^ This issue gained special
momentum in 2006 with rancorous debates and some failed legislative
efforts. The debate over Net Neutrality involves a surprisingly broad
spectrum of political activists, who are fiercely divided over the issue, in
addition to software companies, search titans, content providers, and
Internet telephony firms that have lined up to defend their status quo.^^
One side in the debate advocates, "Preserve the free and open Internet,"
while the other side argues that "Blocking premium pricing in the name
of neutrality might have the unintended effect of blocking the premium
services from which customers would benefit."'^ In an editorial observer column, Adam Cohen argued "The companies fighting Net Neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan 'hands off
the Internet,' that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the
Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the
government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own
hands on it."^'
Although it is apparent that cable and phone companies have
backed a few front groups to defend their positions, it is also true that
the other side of the debate also has large corporate backers, like Google
and Microsoft,^" which could be hit by access fees. It is beyond the scope
of this study to examine which side is currently gaining more support
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
Method
72 7
from the public or which side is closer to a grass-roots campaign. However, it is apparent that both sides have thoroughly used the Web as a
forum for conveying their messages, recruiting supporters, and launching
counter-attacks against opponents' parodies. It is especially noteworthy
that parties on both sides of the debate have posted numerous parody
videos on YouTube, accusing each other of working for corporate selfinterests.
Stimuli.
Parody Video. Among the various existing parody videos, one titled
"Save the Internet: Independence Day" was selected. In this parody of
classic UFO films including 1996's "Independence Day," a grass-roots
activist group called "Save the Internet" portrays the phone and cable
companies as alien enemies to democracy who want to overrun the
Congress and change the way the Internet works by replacing today's
"level playing field" approach with their "gatekeeper" system. The video
then promotes "Net Neutrality" and calls for actions against big cable and
phone companies that want to establish a tiered system for Internet access
and pricing.
Inoculation. An inoculation message was given in the form of a press
release from an alleged grass-roots organization, the so-called "Citizens
Forum For Net Competition." Consistent with typical inoculation treatment, the first part of the inoculation message was designed to elicit a
threat to those who meant to view the parody video. This threat was operationalized as a warning of an impending and potentially influential campaign initiated by front groups to change participants' positions regarding the issue in question.^** This message contained statistics and anecdotal evidence to warn viewers about the deceptive practices employed in
front-group campaigns. The length of the inoculation message was
approximately 380 words (See Appendix for the inoculation message used
in this study).
A dummy message was also created to be administered to participants in the control group. The content of the dummy message was completely irrelevant to the front-group campaign or the specific causes
addressed by the chosen campaign.
Refutation. A refutation message was defined as a post-hoc response,
designed to counter core arguments of the opponent's attack. The
attempt to invalidate the parody video was presented in the form of a
detailed refutation of the attack message communicated by the opponent
group. As suggested, the refutation message in this study specified the
counterargument against the belief and stated a point-by-point rebuttal.''
Participants. Participants in this study included students taking
introductory public relations courses at three large public universities
across the United States. Students participated in the experiment voluntarily, but they received extra credit for completing a series of questionnaires.
All students were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions in this study. Initially, 133 students participated, though twenty
dropped out during the multiple phases of the experiments. Only participant responses that were completed through all phases were used for
718
JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
.the data analysis. Therefore, the final sample size was 113, and the
retention rate was 85%.
Procedures. This research was conducted in two phases. During
Phase 1, participants received an e-mail invitation to participate in a
Web-based experiment. All participants were randomly assigned to
either the experimental or the control group and completed a questionnaire designed to evaluate their initial attitudes toward the Net
Neutrality issue and a few cable and Internet companies. After participants completed the Phase 1 questionnaire, those assigned to the inoculation treatment group read the inoculation message, while those in the
refutational treatment group viewed the parody video. The control
group received a dummy message that had nothing to do with the Net
Neutrality issue.
Phase 2 was administered a week after the first phase was completed. Participants in the inoculation and control groups viewed the
parody video, and those in the refutation message group read a refutational message aimed at countering the core argument of the video and
discrediting the video's alleged sponsor. Following the message, participants completed a questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes
toward the issue and the video's alleged sponsor.
Dependent Measures. For this study, undue manipulative intent,
attitudes toward the issue and attitudes toward the video sponsor were
the dependent variables.
Undue Manipulative Intent. Participants' ability to discriminate the
manipulative intent of an ethically suspicious video was measured
using the five-item undue manipulative intent scale adopted from
Sagarin et al."" Participants were asked to respond to the following
statements using a scale ranging from completely agree to completely
disagree: "The way this video tries to persuade people seems acceptable
to me," "The producer of this video tried to manipulate the audience in
ways that I don't like (reverse coding)," "I was annoyed by this video
because the producer seemed to be trying to inappropriately manage or
control the audience (reverse coding)," "I didn't mind this video; the
producer tried to be persuasive without being excessively manipulative."
Attitudes toward the Issue. Attitudes toward the issue were measured during both Phase 1 (preattitude) and Phase 2 (postattitude). In a
pretest-posttest control group design, random assignment enabled us to
ensure group equivalence with regard to the pre-attitude prior to the
treatment. Postattitude was measured one week after the treatment to
observe the sustainability of the inoculation effect. To measure the attitudes, this investigation adopted six bipolar adjective pairs developed
by Burgoon and colleagues'" and other literature in inoculation
research."^ The pairs included wrong/right, negative/positive, unacceptable/acceptable, unfavorable/favorable, foolish/wise, and bad/
good. The alpha reliabilities of the attitudes toward issue measure were
at Phase 1, .98 (N=113), and at Phase 2, .98 (N=113).
Attitudes toward Corporate Sponsor. To measure participants' atti-
tudes toward the corporate sponsor, Google, this study adopted six
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
Jig
bipolar adjective pairs developed by Burgoon and colleagues.''^ Attitudes
toward the sponsor were also measured at both Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Respondents indicated their degree of agreement with statements regarding whether the producer of the video was "trustworthy," "believable,"
"reliable," "honest," "truthful," and "balanced." The alpha reliabilities of
the attitudes toward corporate sponsor's measure were at Phase 1, .95
(N=113), and at Phase 2, .94 (N=113).
Control and Manipulation Check Measures.
Issue Involvement. Issue involvement was used as a covariate in the
experimental design. This study defined involvement as the "extent to
which the attitudinal issue under consideration is of personal importance."'** It is often operationalized as issue salience or importance.'"^ To
measure participants' involvement in Net Neutrality, the Personal Involvement Inventory (PII) by Zaichkowsky" was adopted. The four following items were used: unimportant/important, of no concern/of much
concern, means nothing/significant, matter/not matter, and irrelevant/
relevant. Reliability of the issue involvement scale was .97 (N=113).
Threat and Counterarguing Output. For manipulation checks, threat
and counterarguing output was used.*' All participants were asked to
evaluate threat and counterarguing output using five bi-polar adjectives
including dangerous/not-dangerous, threatening/not-threatening, intimidating/not-intimidating, harmful/not-harmful, and risky/not risky.
The reliability of these measures was .84. Therefore, all measures used in
this study exceeded acceptable reliability levels.
Results
720
Hypothesis Testing. The four hypotheses were analyzed using
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Involvement, pre-attitude toward the
issue, and pre-attitude toward the corporate sponsor of the parody video
were entered as covariates due to possible effects of the measurement of
attitude change toward the issue and corporate sponsor after the inoculation treatment. Table 1 shows the results of the analysis for the four
hypotheses.
HI proposed that participants who receive the inoculation treatment would be better able to detect the unduly manipulative intent of a
parody video that presumably comes from a corporate front group than
would those in the control group. The aforementioned five-question
Likert-type scale was used to assess participants' perceptions of undue
manipulative intent, with higher scores indicating greater ability to detect
the manipulative intent of a parody video. The analysis revealed a
signiflcant main effect of inoculation treatment [F (1, 70)=9.05, p < .01,
T] =.12, Power=.84]. The mean of the inoculation group (M=3.88, sd=1.17)
is significantly different from the mean of the control group (M=3.00,
sd=1.36), indicating that individuals exposed to the preemptive inoculation message were more likely to detect the manipulative intent of a parody video than those who were not exposed.
H2 predicted that participants who receive inoculation treatment
would be more resistant to attitude changes following exposure to a parody video that presumably comes from a corporate front group than
JOURNALISM &• MASS COMMUNICATION
QUARTERLY
TABLE 1
Effects of Inoculation Treatments on the Perceptions of Undue Manipulative Intent
and on Resistance to the Influence of Parody Video
Undue Manipulative Intent
Inoculation
Control
M
sd
df
F
HP
3.88
3.00
1.17
1.36
1/70
9.05**
HP1= Supported
ATI
Inoculation
ATS
Control
4.68 (4.25)
5.70 (4.29)
1.52 ( .94)
1.27 ( .72)
1/70
7.62**
HP2= Supported
Inoculation
Control
5.27 (6.09)
6.15 (6.26)
1.19 ( .82)
.90 ( .80)
1/70
8.05**
HP3=Supported
Note: Results of ANCOVA tests using involvement, preattitude toward issue and sponsor as covariates. Undue manipulative intent was scored on 7-point scales ranging from 1 to 7, with higher scores
indicating greater quality. Both Attitudes Toward Issue (ATI) and Attitudes Toward Sponsor (ATS)
were measured using 7-point scales. Higher scores on the scale signify more positive attitudes.
Mean and standard deviation of pre-attitude scores are provided in parentheses. There were no statistical differences in the preattitude scores, confirming that random treatment group assignments
successfully equalized preattitude scores.
**p< .01
would those in the control group. Lower scores on the postattitude
measure indicate greater resistance to the influence of the parody video
aimed at promoting Net Neutrality. The analysis presented a significant
main effect of inoculation treatment [F (1, 70)=7.62, p < .01, T]^=.1O, Power
=.77]. The mean of the inoculation group's postattitude score (M=4.68,
sd=1.52) was significantly different from that of the control group
(M=5.70, sd=1.27), indicating that the inoculation treatment effectively
limited the persuasive effects of the parody video on viewers' targeted
attitudes as compared to the control condition.
H3 proposed that participants who receive inoculation treatment
would be more resistant to the sponsor of a parody video that presumably comes from a corporate front group than would those in the control group. Higher mean scores indicate more positive attitudes toward
the presumed corporate sponsor of the parody video. The analysis
revealed a signiflcant main effect of the preemptive inoculation treatment [P (1, 70)=8.05, p < .01, Ti'=.10, Power=.80]. The mean score of the
viewers' attitudes toward the corporate sponsor following inoculation
treatment (M=5.27, sd=1.19) is signiflcantly different from the mean of
the control group (M=6.15, sd=.9O) which indicates that individuals
who were exposed to the inoculation message were more resistant to
changing their attitudes toward the sponsor of a parody video than
were those who did not receive the message.
H4 suggested that the inoculation pretreatment would be more
effective than post-hoc refutation in conferring resistance to attitude
change following exposure to a parody video that presumably comes
from a corporate front group. We have tested this hypothesis by comRESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
721
paring the mean scores of the inoculation group and the refutation group
for each dependent variable: manipulative intent, attitudes toward the
issue, and attitudes toward the sponsor. For all the dependent variables,
none of the comparisons yielded any significant difference. Therefore, H4
was not supported.
RQ. To examine the influence of participants' involvement on the
results of HI to H3, we posed a research question asking, "To what extent
does involvement eliminate the effect of the inoculation treatment on participants' resistance to the persuasive attack message?" To answer the
research question, a series of analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were
performed with the involvement index acting as a covariate and the perception of undue manipulative intent and the attitude indices (i.e., attitudes toward the issue and attitudes toward the sponsor of the parody
video) serving as dependent variables.
None of the analyses yielded significant effects of involvement on
the dependent variables. On the other hand, the significant effect of inoculation treatment remained, even when involvement was entered as a
covariate, thus demonstrating the robust effect of inoculation on conferring resistance to persuasion.
Discussion
722
vVe examined if refutational preemption could provide participants
with the ability to identify unduly manipulative intent of the parody
video, and corifer significant resistance to the video's claim and to the
sponsor. We also wanted to compare the effect of inoculation and post-hoc
refutation on resistance to attitude changes by simulating a real-world
case in which people may run across countering messages from the mass
media after their initial exposure to such parody videos, which could be
considered as a post-hoc refutation condition.
As predicted, participants in the inoculation condition were better
able to detect unfair manipulation, demonstrated fewer attitude changes
after exposure to the video parody, and possessed a more negative view
of the video sponsor than did their counterparts in the control group.
These results are encouraging to educators and practitioners in public
relations who seek to instill public resistance to deceptive persuasion.
It is important to note that findings in this study were obtained from
the test on an issue (i.e.. Net Neutrality) to which most participants had
not developed enough knowledge, issue involvement, and prior attitudes
to effectively evaluate which party was more manipulating. Thus, findings in this study imply that individuals may be less susceptible to a
manipulative parody video when they are immunized in advance. In this
case where participants did not have strong opinions and attitudes, inoculation preemption was so successful that participants' involvement did
not influence the size of the effect of the treatment on resistance to attitude
change.
However, these results also pose an ironic question: What if this
refutational preemption strategy were employed by corporate front
groups to counter arguments from grass-roots activist groups in situations
where the public has little prior knowledge of the issue? In fact, this study
¡ouRNALiSM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
featured Citizens for Net Competition, commonly conceived as a front
group of cable and phone companies, in instilling resistance to the influence of persuasive parody from an organization that could be considered a grass-roots activist group. While this reverse projection of groups
contradictory to common sense was intentionally made to reduce the
possible impact of stereotypical judgment on manipulative intent,
results of this study indicate that the presumed front group succeeded
in instilling resistance and less favorable attitudes toward the concept of
Net Neutrality.
Finally, this study failed to identify the superiority of inoculation
to post-hoc refutation in instilling resistance to attitude change. There
were no differences found in means for each dependent variable
between participants in the refutation and inoculation groups. A posthoc analysis was run to examine if the refutational message also generated the same effect as inoculation did. Results confirmed that refutation
after the suspicious video also conferred the resistance to attitude
change, with the refutation group being more aware of unduly manipulative intent [F (1, 70)=12.67, p <. 01], possessing less favorable attitudes to Net Neutrality [F (1, 70)=7.12, p < .01], and demonstrating more
negative attitudes toward the video's sponsor [F (1, 70)=17.11, p < .001]
than the control group. It is interesting that both inoculation pretreatment and refutational countering exerted the same effect in instilling
attitude change against the parody video.
Limitation and Future Study Suggestions. While this study is
meaningful in several ways, there are some limitations from both theoretical and practical perspectives that can be used to guide future
research endeavors. First, we did not examine the mechanism by which
perceptions of undue manipulative intent lead to resistance, although
hypotheses 2 and 3 are grounded on an assumption drawn from previous studies. Indeed, participants in this study who perceived the parody video as unduly manipulative also resisted attitude change, suggesting a possible link between manipulative intent and resistance to attitude change. However, it is not known whether participants developed
resistance as a result of their perception of unfair manipulation in the
parody video. As previously mentioned, past studies suggest that unduly manipulative intent could be a mediating variable leading to resistance to attitude change presumably as a function of counterarguing.
Future research could determine this relationship by employing a mediation analysis.
Second, the way in which we presented the inoculation and posthoc refutational message as a text-based news release may not accurately reflect the real battle that is occurring on YouTube. In reality, each
competing party on a controversial issue continually threads on the
rival's attack video with another video message aimed at discrediting
the credibility of the source and countering the rival's core arguments.
Thus, future research should employ the video-based inoculation message in testing inoculation theory.
The use of a somewhat neutral issue in testing the inoculation theory also limits the interpretation of this study's findings. The question
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
723
remains whether the effect of debunking the forthcoming claims by a
suspicious communicator would work even in a politically sensitive
issue like the "Al Gore Penguin Army" YouTube video. To viewers who
are strongly opposed to the position advocated by such parody videos,
forewarning is expected to confer resistance to the persuasive impact of
the message by reinforcing their prior positions. However, what if viewers are initially in favor of the position being advocated? Could the inoculation preemption effectively weaken their prior attitudes or effectively
eliminate their cognitive dissonance? Future research should explore the
role of the prior issue position in strengthening or weakening resistance
to the influence of parody videos.
Finally, this present study did not consider the credibility factor in
testing our hypotheses. That is, participants in this study were not given
any cue about the organization aside from its name on the top of the
press release used as the inoculation message. Indeed, the rival side commonly discredited the group (i.e.. Citizens for Net Competition) as a
cable and phone business' front group. If participants had known that
the alerted message came from a corporate front group to confuse them,
the results of this study would have been different. In this regard, Pfau
et al.^** pointed out that an individual's perception of an organization's
reputation, image, and credibility could affect the effectiveness of the
inoculation threat. Future research must consider experimental designs
that vary the credibility cue in testing inoculation theory when the issue
is not well known by the general population.
Appendix and Notes follow.
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APPENDIX
Inoculation Message
Citizen's Forum For Net Competition
1120 ly Street
Vancouver, WA 97889
Phone: 602.596.4379
netcompetition@netcompetition.org
Beware of Suspicious Video Attacks on Net Competition. Don't be fooled.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, and their front groups are spending millions weekly to deceive
and misinform the American public. Their latest attempt to hoodwink Internet users comes in the
form of a parody video on YouTube — a clever piece of industry propaganda riddled with half-truths
and outright lies. The Internet giants conceal their real interests behind the guise of a plausiblesounding message, while undermining the work of genuine public and consumer advocates.
Those Internet companies have attempted to discredit us and our transparent policy position. Most
of these parodies are produced by the Internet giants with the intent of undermining the concept of
Net Competition and smearing its supporters. It's unfortunate that they disguise themselves as
Internet-friendly activists.
Using this clandestine propaganda strategy, the Internet giants will continue to promote the deceptively named "Net Neutrality" in hopes of making their proposed Net regulation sound less onerous
and threatening, and more virtuous.
Now, they want to convey the perception that cable and phone companies aim at creating a twotiered Internet with a fast lane and a slow lane. This effort is nothing more than propaganda designed
to clear a path for the big Internet companies that have already congested your Internet.
David Färber, a distinguished career professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie
Mellon University, and Michael Katz, a professor of economics at the University of California at
Berkeley said, "when traffic surges beyond the ability of the network to carry it, something is going
to be delayed. When choosing what gets delayed, it makes sense to allow a network to favor traffic
from, say, a patient's heart monitor over traffic delivering a music download." Currently, companies
like Google, which paid $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube precisely to increase video traffic online, are
really getting a free ride. It is no secret that they want to stick consumers with the whole bill.
So, when you see a suspicious parody video on YouTube, remember that those big Internet companies want the government to take control of the Internet on behalf of them.
Who should pay for causing Internet congestion? Multi-billion dollar corporations or you? Keep
our Internet competitive.
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
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NOTES
1. Matthew P. McAllister and Joseph Turow, "New Media and the
Commercial Sphere: Two Intersecting Trends, Five Categories of Concern," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 46 (December 2002): 50514.
2. Laura Parker, "Parodies Prompt Laughs, Lawsuits," USA Today,
March 23, 2007, sec. A, p. 1.
3. Antonio Regalado and Dinne Searcey, "Where Did That Video
Spoofing Gore's Film Come From?" Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2006,
sec. B, p. 1. DCI group did not make a comment about the video spoof.
For years, Exxon-Mobile has funded some advertising campaigns which
contribute to convincing the public that global warming is not a problem;
"Behind the Lines: Esso's Claim to C!are About the Environment,"
Ecologist, (November 2002): 11.
4. Tux is the official mascot of the Linux, an open-source operating
system.
5. Regalado and Searcey, "Where Did That Video Spoofing," Bl.
6. Kathy R. Fitzpatrick and Michael J. Palenchar, "Disclosing Special
Interests: Constitutional Restrictions on Front Groups," Journal of Public
Relations Research 18 0uly 2006): 203-24.
7. Stuart Elliott, "An Undisclosed Paid Endorsement Ignites a Debate
in the Public Relations Industry," New York Times, January 12, 2005, p. 2.
8. Eamon Javers, "This Opinion Brought to You By...: Stealth
Sponsorship of Talking Heads and Op-Ed Columnists Is Surprisingly
Common," Business Week, January 30, 2006, 35.
9. Michael Pfau, Michel M. Haigh, Jeanetta Sims, and Shelley Wigley,
"The Influence of Corporate Front-Group Stealth Campaigns,"
Communication Research 34 (February 2007): 73-99.
10. William J. McGuire, "Inducing Resistance to Persuasion: Some
Contemporary Approaches," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,
ed. Leonard Berkowitz (NY: Academic Press, 1964), 191-229.
11. Alice H. Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes (TX:
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12. Michael Pfau and Michael Burgoon, "Inoculation in Political
Campaign Communication," Human Communication Research 15 (fall
1988): 91-111; Michael Pfau, Joshua Compton, Kimberly A. Parker, Elaine
M. Wittenberg, Chasu An, Monica Ferguson, Heather Horton, and Yuri
Malyshev, "The Traditional Explanation for Resistance Versus Attitude
Accessibility: Do They Trigger Distinct or Overlapping Processes of
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13. Michael Pfau, Kyle James Tusing, Asean F. Koerner, Waipeng Lee,
Linda C. Godbold, Linda J. Penaloza, Violet Shu-Huei Yang, and YahHuei Hong, "Enriching the Inoculation Construct: The Role of Critical
Components in the Process of Resistance," Human Communication Research
24 (winter 1997): 187-215.
14. Bruce Pinkleton, "The Effects of Negative Comparative Political
Advertising on Candidate Evaluations and Advertising Evaluations: An
Exploration," Journal of Advertising 26 (spring 1997): 19-29.
726
JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
15. Hua-Hsin Wan and Michael Pfau, "The Relative Effectiveness of
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Attack Messages: Application to Direct Mail," Communication Monographs 57 (March 1990): 25-43.
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Jeanetta Sims, Eileen Gilchrist, Jason Russell, Shelley Wigley, Jackie
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30. Zuwerlink and Devine, "Attitude Importance and Resistance to
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31. Pfau et al., "Enriching the Inoculation Construct," 190.
RESISTANCE TO ETHICALLY SUSPICIOUS PARODY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
-JJJ
32. Donald T. Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experimental and QuasiExperimental Designs for Research (IL: Rand McNally College Publishing,
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Journal, August 8, 2006, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB1154036
77535519628-7ICE80_FKCefWtDOsgTZT_n7H2w_20070807.html
(December 1, 2007).
35. David Färber and Michael Katz, "Hold Off On Net Neutrality,"
Washington Post, January 19, 2007, sec. A, p. 19.
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May Be about to End," New York Times, May 28, 2006, WK9.
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45. Pfau et al., "The Influence of Corporate Front-Group," 85.
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47. Pfau et al, "The Influence of Corporate Front-Group," 85.
48. Pfau et al., "The Influence of Corporate Front-Group," 84.
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